Consider this blog a place we engage with each other about what's up for us. I promise to post often and to be real about what I consider. I hope you choose to share your thoughts and feelings and push back to help me think more deeply.

Anyone who knows me is aware that I am not presently a huge fan of television. But as a kid, I watched a lot of it! We used to make popcorn and sit on the floor, pajama-clad, mesmerized right in front of the TV. When I was a pre-teen, The Mary Tyler Moore Show taught me all about the world of working women by being an entertaining and exquisitely written show. With the television icon’s recent death, I find myself thinking often about how seminal her influence was, and how grateful I am for the sitcom that ran from 1970-1977 and streamed into my living room on Saturday nights for almost a decade very near bedtime.

Despite equal opportunity legislation, assertiveness training, and increased transparency about pay scales to ensure equality, women consistently earn less per hour, per week, per month for the same work, than their male counterparts. Many point to women’s hesitation to ask for a raise as a key cause of their generally lower starting and regular earnings.

A leader in Europe raised differences in norms about reporting relationships as a factor in their new “matrixed” leadership plan. A leader in Mexico brought up the lack of women leaders in his organization and wondered if diversity training would help. And a US based leader interrupted a Japanese colleague 3 times before getting feedback that culturally, this was seen as impolite.

Increasingly, clients, colleagues, and associates ask about how best to manage the unique dynamics of remote workers—employees who are not co-located to the company’s main headquarters. Distances vary from two buildings a few streets apart to offices in three or more continents.

When people describe employee/employer pairings that fail, they often say, “S/he wasn’t a good fit.” And people who leave companies often say simply, “I didn’t really fit in there.” When the culture of your workplace doesn’t work for you, it is easy to feel like the awkward kid who just can’t find the right crowd to join in middle school and lies awake at night dreaming of simply and completely fitting in. But fitting in is not the answer when it comes to finding the right place to hang your star.

What you do matters. For many years, we used this as our tagline for our firm, and while our tagline has changed, the sentiment remains strong for me. The feeling each of us gets when we are contributing at work, being seen, and making a difference is essential to our humanity and our sense of well-being.

Meaning is increasingly named by job seekers as one of the things they hope for the most when they look for an organization to join, and it is one of the things people name out loud when they love their jobs.

Hydro Flask, a beloved Bend, OR based company acquired by Helen of Troy in March of 2016, continues to grow and thrive as they meet their awesome mission: “Saving the world from lukewarm.” We had the chance to ask Moementum client and Hydro Flask General Manager (former CEO) Scott Allan to share with us his philosophy on leading a company in fast growth. Enjoy his astute insights and thanks, Scott!

We all read the headlines and say to each other, “Can you believe what happened at Wells Fargo?” The thought bubble we don’t say but often feel is something like, “Those idiots.” We wonder, how could people lose their way so significantly and do things like sandbagging

People tell us that they worry that tears at work will make them appear weak and that when someone cries in their presence they just don’t know what to do to help. Tears make us uncomfortable and while across the gender divide women report often feeling seen as overly emotional

My young daughter said this aloud as I was fretting about what to wear for a recent public speaking event. Her off-the-cuff encouragement reminded me what my talk was about but also led me to recall a dynamic I often see play out within organizations. In marketing and creating their culture, companies focus on the outside and neglect less tangible but more impactful assets.

*A short excerpt from Moe Carrick and Cammie Dunaway’s book, Fit Matters: How to Love Your Job, due out with Maven House Press in 2017

When people describe employee/employer pairings that fail, they often say, “S/he wasn’t a good fit.” And people who leave companies often say simply, “I didn’t really fit in there.” When the culture of your workplace doesn’t work for you, it is easy to feel like the awkward kid who just can’t find the right crowd to join in middle school and lies awake at night dreaming of simply and completely fitting in. But fitting in is not the answer when it comes to finding the right place to hang your star.